


i do love you

by trashcanbarbie



Series: unconnected klaroline drabbles [2]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Caroline Forbes, Domestic Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Post-Canon, Protective Klaus Mikaelson, Vampire Caroline Forbes, Werewolf Bites, if ya feel, more like enemies to lovers to kinda friends/proper relationship, they skip a couple steps but yeah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:47:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28167981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashcanbarbie/pseuds/trashcanbarbie
Summary: She inhales sharply, and manages to tease back, “Maybe, once,” and it’s true.“You again,” she says, scowling a little.“Big bad hybrid,” he mocks.She steps back, crossing her arms, staring up at him. “Do you think I'm scared?”“No,” Klaus says, and he's right.
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson
Series: unconnected klaroline drabbles [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2069625
Comments: 2
Kudos: 69





	i do love you

“Do I know you, love?” someone asks — she’s in a club that's too loud, frankly, but she likes the drinks there and it’s easy to pluck someone out of the crowd, disguise bite marks as hickeys. Oh, Caroline's fallen from grace. Idealistic little baby vamp her would be horrified, that's for sure.

She laughs at what she thinks is just a cheesy little pickup line, and starts to turn to her admirer. Maybe she’ll play along, butter up her dinner before she bites, but then she does turn, and — he’s a little taller than her, scruffy beard, his hair's curling at the ends, and he's got this wicked crooked grin, like he knows something she doesn't.

She inhales sharply, and manages to tease back, “maybe, once,” and it’s true.

“Really?” he says, and his eyes cut through her. It’s like they're the only people in this club, this town _no_ — this whole world. “Would you like to, again?” he says, and it's not really a question. She doesn't know what else it is.

“Depends,” she shrugs. “Is there anything new?”

He shakes his head. “I'm not a catalogue, love.”

“Oh?” she says, eyebrows raised airily. “Too bad.”

She turns and tries to flounce off through the crowd, but he’s too fast, the strobe lights flash and suddenly he’s in front of her. She nearly collides into his chest, but barely doesn't.

“You again,” she says, scowling a little.

“Big bad hybrid,” he mocks.

She steps back, crossing her arms, staring up at him. “Do you think I'm scared?”

“No,” Klaus says, and he's right.

—

She wakes up in an unbearably nice hotel room. A menu for room service with lobster and caviar on it, the sheets are so lovely she could die, and there’s funny impressionistic paintings on the walls — Caroline doesn't doubt Klaus could do something better in a minute. 

The heavy arm looped around her middle feels like a sinker on the line, so she sits up and drops it next to his sleeping face. He doesn't even stir, and Caroline notes he must be a heavy sleeper. Interesting. She files that away for later.

Caroline gets off the bed and hunts for her clothes. They left a trail all over the room last night. She finds a shoe under the bed, and the other next to the door and her dress on the other side of the room, but only a scrap of fabric left over from her panties. She gets as dressed as she can and tries to make herself look presentable in the mirror. Oh, God, her hair’s a mess, and she looks even more dead than normal.

“Going so soon?” he says from the bed, where he hasn't moved. She didn't even know he was awake.

“Oh, did you want me to stay for breakfast?” she says cloyingly, fluttering her eyelashes at him. 

He grins and sits up, leaning against the headboard. “Terribly, Caroline,” he says back, taunting her just as much.

She scowls and heads for the door, but he interrupts her again.

“Don't have anything to say?” he calls at her, cajoling as always.

“Why would I?” she sneers at him, but he doesn't flinch.

He rolls his eyes, eyes bright and alive. She likes these conversations, verbal battles. She's missed them more than she thought, than she remembers. But she feels quick and sharp and witty and alive right now, more so than she’s felt in a while. “You seemed pretty appreciative last night,” he grins, sharp with knowledge. None of their hickeys are there, anymore, and Caroline curses vampire healing.

“So did you,” she parres back, jutting out her chin as she imitates him breathily, in a bad British accent, _“Oh Caroline, love, yes_ _just_ _like tha —”_

“I’ve never pretended not to enjoy your company, love,” he interrupts her firmly, not a hint of shame on his face, then adds, “that's always been you.”

She doesn't have a response to that, so she makes a face instead and opens the door to a hallway, stepping through.

“I'll see you!” he calls after her, and Caroline doesn’t need to look to know he's staring after her, that cocky look on his face, only dressed in a sheet.

‘“No, you won’t,” she says back, doesn't bother raising her voice — he’ll hear her — and shuts the door with a satisfying slam. She smiles as she walks down the corridor, and knows he’ll know that too.

—

Well, it was a good run, is the first thing she thinks after it happens.

She’d gone with a few twenty-three-year-olds into the woods, which was of course a mistake, but the one she’s been feeding on is actually alright, if he doesn't stink of patchouli, and she's been bored lately. So she goes, crammed into a van that lurches up the hill to where they’re planning on camping. She misses being their age, or a bit younger. Doing stupid things just to have fun, like this. It’s not quite the same now, but she tries to enjoy it anyway.

It’s a nice place, beautiful, with tall trees and forest and lots of little bunnies and things. Caroline thinks of Stefan’s squirrel diet as she’s sucking on patchouli-boy’s neck and laughs.

Apparently, there's also a wolf pack up there. She's collecting firewood when she hears the snarl, and she barely has time to turn before the thing has launched herself at her. She kills it, of course, and staggers back to camp before she realises the beast has taken a chunk of her arm with it.

She sits heavily, mouth open in shock, and looks at what's left of her arm. Patchouli wanders out, questioning look on his face, but then it’s replaced with a shout of fear when he sees her dripping wound.

"Shush," she says to him, and he does, face long and pale, mouth bolted shut. "I'm fine,” Caroline says, and then looks back at it, “Or, not fine, but it's okay.” He doesn't say anything, Caroline realises he can’t. "I'm dying," she tells him anyway, because what difference does it make? "But I'd like some energy, to make it a little easier." His eyes widen, she grins, and feels like a predator. Why did she ever hate this feeling? The top of the food chain is the best place to be.

She draws closer, and thinks about the fact she likes him. He has a nice laugh, and he took her up here, and it was a beautiful place, until it got stained by...this. "Do you know what happens when a werewolf bites a vampire?" she asks him, fangs hovering over the blood singing to her. 

Of course he doesn't, but he can't speak to tell her that, so she just bites him and when he's slumped and pale, says, "I remember it," to his unconscious body. She likes him, but not enough. 

Just then, the other two wander out of the woods and start screaming for an ambulance. Caroline rolls her eyes, and shuts them up too.

"I should have died," she tells the last two when her veins are full, but they can't hear her either. "I was saved, that time. Not that lucky this go, though." She laughs, steals their van, and figures someone will find them. Probably.

She goes home, because she doesn't know where else to go, and doesn't wanna stay in those woods with the wolves avenging their fallen comrade, so she returns to the suburban house she’d bought a few decades ago, to feel a little more normal, like she's dying of something that humans do.

She thinks all the others live in the suburbs too now, she muses as she sits in the bathtub, watching the infection crawl up her arm. Elena and Damon still live on the East Coast, somewhere, and they’re...Elena and Damon, he's desperately in love with her, she could do better. But they're happy, Caroline has to admit.

Alaric’s dead. Her girls, Elizabeth and Josie….well, it was Josie, in the end. The Gemini line succeeded. She ran into a few of them, years ago, and they’d thanked her and thanked her, said she was the reason their long line continued. She supposes she is, and that's the funny thing. She never meant it like that, she just wanted Alaric to have a bit of Jo. 

The others...she doesn't know. She doesn't know if she cares, either.

—

She looks at it in the mirror, and the truth cannot be denied. “I’m dying,” she says out loud, like it matters when there’s no one to hear her.

She figures she only has a few more hours, and looks at the angry red wound closer.

She doesn't care, particularly. She’s done a lot of living.

—

He comes before the real stuff starts, thankfully, because she’d hate to have that disadvantage, but after the hallucinations. Her mother was standing in the bathroom doorway for twenty minutes before Caroline realised it wasn't real.

He knocks on the door. Caroline knows who it is, she just wonders how he knows about the bite, because he wouldn't be here for any other reason, surely?

She gets to her feet shakily and stumbles along the hallway, as if she’s drunk, and makes it to the door with a swimming head. 

“Klaus,” she mumbles, as she undoes the lock with shaking hands. He breathes, on the other side, and she knows it’s really him. 

She opens the door, the assault of bright sunlight hurts her eyes, but she blinks past it, and says, “hello.”

He looks just the same, with his warm eyes and the tilt of his mouth, like he's about to kiss her or insult her, but either way he’ll call her love and throw some strange compliment in there.

Klaus looks at her arm, immediately, and raises his eyes back up only when she leans on the doorframe to cover it. “Hello, love,” he says.

“Are you real?” she asks.

“The hallucinations have started, then,” he says, like he’s disappointed and was expecting it, all at once.

“Are you real?” she says again, desperately. He looks real, but so did her mother. She doesn't know what’s real, anymore. She should have compelled Patchouli to kill her and bury her in the woods, because Caroline hates feeling helpless like this.

His face creases, and it’s not funny, it’s not a game anymore. “I'm real, love,” he says, and steps closer.

“That's what he would say,” she counters, and tries to smile.

“What do I have to do to prove it to you, Caroline?” he asks her, and his chest is moving rapidly, his eyes blown wide and panicked.

She likes seeing him like this, or some sick part of her does. “I believe you,” she whispers. “It doesn’t matter if you are or not, anyway.”

He looks like he wants to say something, but doesn't.

“Why are you here?” she asks, feigning innocence just for the game of it. She's half decided he's fake, but is talking to him anyway.

He raises his eyebrows, “I think you know.” Caroline’s arm aches, and she thinks about being buried in that beautiful forest, cold dirt shoveled over her face, laid down to rest so beautifully, weighed to the earth, and wishes with dry regret.

“No,” she shakes her head, purses her lips. “Not at all.”

He sighs, heavily and raises an eyebrow as he intones, “Have I killed a pack of werewolves for nothing, then?”

Caroline laughs a dry laugh, head rocking against the wood of the door frame. “Probably. You didn't need to kill them.”

He looks at her, and at her arm pointedly. “I think I did.”

—

His blood tastes as good as it did all those years ago, and she still can’t get enough, so when her fingers grip his, holding him still, she pretends it’s to save her life, ignoring the fact it’s been saved by now.

“Drink, darling,” he murmurs, and seems to be enjoying it too, by the way he leans his head back, eyes fluttering shut.

She murmurs an answer but it’s muffled by his artery, and he doesn't care enough to ask, and she doesn't care enough to say it again. 

She wipes her mouth, and he only leaves after her forearm has returned to what it used to be: unblemished and pale. She’s healed, hurrah! Too bad, since she’d liked seeing her mother again.

“See you, love,” he laughs on her porch, and they both know all the neighbours are looking at the strange new arrivals to the house that's been empty for years.

“No, you won’t,” she says back, and watches him get into his car — some shiny new number he’ll have ditched by the end of the month — it’s beginning to feel like a habit.

—

“I'm so bored,” she complains, one day. It's mid afternoon but they're in bed, laying against her headboard, drowsy.

“Of what?” he asks her, hand sliding across the sheets to wrap around her hip.

She sighs heavily, he drops a kiss to her collarbone. “I don't know. Everything.”

“You should get a hobby,” he says, murmured through her skin, “maybe pottery,” he suggests, as he kisses the corner of her mouth.

She rolls her eyes at him, but she's going to a class by the end of the month.

At first, her creations are horrid things, half glazed, slumped over, sad little plates and bowls. She makes a mug that looks like some strange torture device that probably originated from Klaus’ childhood.

Klaus laughs himself stupid when she brings them home, and her face flushes as she says, “you're the one that told me to get a hobby!”

“I said hobby, not damnation,” he howls, and by the end of it, Caroline's smiling too.

Then, she gets a little better. Her plates and cups look like they're from one of those fancy stores that sells authentic items from tribes deep in the rainforests of Peru, or something. The point is, they're not perfect and manufactured by the thousand in China, but lovely all the same, with their little identities in their imperfections.

She goes through a phase of trying to recreate 17th century vases, which Klaus helps her with, even goes with her to the class a few times, and the instructor looks at them like they're newlyweds, or something.

“I feel like that 90’s movie,” Klaus says, as he helps her shape the base of her vase (of course he knows how to do this, she’d sighed when he first got there and whipped up a perfect bowl in ten seconds flat). “You know the one. Julia Roberts.”

“Ghost,” she replies, and one of the other women there gives him a funny look, because the 90’s have long since fallen out of pop culture.

Caroline smiles and Klaus says, “we like to watch those old movies, you know the ones they play at city hall, sometimes?”

The woman laughs with recognition and goes, “oh, yes, interesting bit of history, isn't it?”

“Quite,” Klaus chuckles, and he does this whole thing quite well, the socialization, the suburbia, Caroline notices. She’ll tease him when they get home, but for now, she just sits silently with a smile on her face, fingers slipping over the wet clay.

—

“I'm different, you know,” she says softly, as she falls asleep in his car. The road curves and Caroline opens her eyes a sliver to peer out the window at the dark night rushing past. They’re going home. She’s awfully tired.

“It's what I expected,” he says, eyes on the road. “Normal. If you can say we’re normal,” he laughs quietly to himself, since Caroline isn’t listening.

“My humanity….” she starts, but trails off, unsure what to say. She looks at the horizon instead, uneven with the hills in the distance, but mostly blotchy with streetlights and house lights and little silhouettes of buildings.

“It's not off, but it's not the same,” he says, like he’s heard it a thousand times before. She’s momentarily pissed off at that, but then she remembers he probably has.

“I think I forgot,” she theorises.

“We all forget,” he says simply, and sounds a little wistful. Caroline wonders about his childhood in the tenth century. The sibling that died. She’s forgotten his name. "I would have been surprised if you were the same, really."

She sighs, and rubs her forehead. “I— I don't even know where all the others are now, I haven't spoken to them in years.”

“Does it matter?” he asks, and glances into the rearview mirror. There’s no one behind him, just tarmac, but he keeps doing it anyway.

“They were my friends,” Caroline says softly, and she knows it’s a weak excuse.

“Caroline, your childhood friends do not dictate the rest of your life,” he says like it’s obvious.

Klaus turns into her driveway, and Caroline whispers, “I wish I hadn't forgotten. I don't remember being seventeen, but I know I kind of hated it."

“I remember your birthday,” Klaus says, and looks at her.

—

Klaus starts coming around more, and her neighbours ask about him sometimes, slyly, when they come to talk about HOA regulations or street parties. _I’ve seen a rather dashing young man over a few times,_ they say and Caroline smiles, and laughs, and says, _yeah, he’s a prostitute_ _._ _Really_ _nice cock._ They walk away, shocked and scandalized, and she closes the door, laughs into her house.

It’s just for the fun of it, and not even a little true, since Caroline absolutely does not pay him. Klaus would be furious if he knew, so Caroline tells him. She leaves out the part about his cock, because that would make him glow with pride and make some snarky comment to her.

They fight as often as they fuck, and for no reason at all, maybe just for a pastime between sex.

“I love you,” she sobs, after their latest row, about something she doesn't even care about, and neither does he. She's exhausted, hungry, sitting on her couch with all her strings cut. It seems whoever is controlling her life is finally tired of it, and they’ve left her body behind like a broken doll a child’s grown tired of.

He doesn't say anything, just comes and sits next to her, on the couch, like they are normal people, not a vampire and a hybrid. Not two people who maybe hate each other but can't say away either.

“I want to die,” she whispers, for the second time. “I hate being who I am.”

“No, you don't,” he says gently, and Caroline doesn't know if she believes him.

She remembers being seventeen and dying, and wishes. She's tired. If it had ended then, at least it would have been short. She would have gone out with all that light inside her, or whatever Klaus had said, and her friends would have mourned her bitterly, but it'd have been short, and human, and it would have actually mattered to everyone. Now, her life’s….nothing. She doesn't do anything. She doesn't know anyone. It’s just Klaus, really, and that brings up some form of hate for him to the back of her throat, where it sits like a volcanic eruption, biting and bubbling. “God, I wish you let me die,” she says, and hot tears run down her cheeks. The only thing that stops her is the shock of the fact she doesn't remember the last time she cried.

Klaus pulls her into him, sideways. “Don't talk to god, love,” he murmurs, and Caroline doesn't laugh, but she thinks it's funny. “And if you wanted to die, you wouldn't have drunk, not even if it tasted like the last supper.”

“It did,” she whispers.

He laughs, this time.

—

So much time has passed, Caroline hardly remembers being human. All her friends from that time are gone, lost between the years like flowers pressed between pages of a book about vampirism and pain and loss. She hasn't really made any new ones, just Klaus and a few neighbours in the suburbia, a few people from her pottery class. They think she’s the busy business woman grand-daughter of the woman who bought the house first, and Klaus is her what, boyfriend? Gigolo? Maybe he is, but either way the woman next door shoots her concerned looks after she hears them screaming at each other, and Caroline just smiles back, because she wins those arguments.

—

"Fine, don't knock," she says to him, not looking up.

She's baking bread from a recipe book he gave her a few weeks ago, and it must be two hundred years old, or something ridiculous. Half the ingredients don't exist anymore, but she doesn't care. She loves it all the same, even as he brushes it off like it doesn't mean anything.

He smiles at her in the doorway and says, “are you busy next week?”

She isn't, but she says, “depends.”

“Brilliant,” he smiles like she said _no, Klaus! I’m free to sit there and have enigmatic conversations for all eternity!_ He reaches into his pocket and draws out two bits of paper, glossy, thick, and slaps them onto the floury table.

“What is that?” Caroline asks him, not bothering to read the slips, even though she can see they’re plane tickets.

“Flights,” he just says.

She sighs, and figures she may as well just find out. “Where?”

“I thought we’d start in Paris,” he barely hesitates, but Caroline’s eyes dart to him. That means he's planned something extravagant and long and he knows she'll hate it, or pretend to.

“I’m not going to Europe with you,” she says, and keeps kneading her dough.

He sighs like he knew it was coming, (he did) and drawls, “And why not?”

“I can’t stand you.”

“Don't lie,” he grins at her, and she rolls her eyes and doesn't say anything. “I've already booked the flights, love.”

“That's not my fault,” she says stubbornly, “You should’ve actually asked me, first.”

“Love —” he starts, leaning on the table

“What?” she interrupts irritably, just to piss him off, but it doesn't work.

He smiles wistfully, nostalgically, “remember when you were seventeen?”

“No,” she says in a hard voice, because she knows what’s coming.

“And you said you wanted to see it all. Great cities and art and music, and you can't find that in the dreary little suburbs. Where do you want to spend your million birthdays? Here, or France?”

She sighs, extracts her hands from the dough. “My birthday's not for months, but fine. I’ll go.” She picks up the tickets. First Class.

He yells with hurrah, and she smiles at the sight.

— 

“I do love you,” she says in the backstreet of the cab, brushing snow and wet out of her hair and the scarf Klaus had given her wound around her neck. It’s in response to a fight they’d had a few days ago, just because they were bored or Caroline was picking at everything.

_“Don't pretend you love me, Caroline,” he'd sneered, face screwed up with some emotion. Disgust?_

_She paced the length of the room and stopped, eyes widening in confusion and confrontation_ _. “Pretend to love you?” she scoffed, then snapped, “most days I have to pretend to tolerate you.”_

_“Tolerate me? Caroline, it’s incredible how you fail to grasp how much you want to love me, and how you can’t love.”_

_“What, because I'm a vampire?” she’d said back, tone all haughty and righteous. You created vampires, buddy, she wants to say. Your fault!_

_“No, love,” Klaus said, almost_ _gently_ _, and Caroline felt like the_ _fly_ _into the spider's trap, “Because you're a bitch,” he finished, in that gentle tone still_ _._

She's long forgiven him, but she’s still thinking about it for some reason. Most of their fights are forgotten as soon as the night ends, but not that one.

“Even if you think I’m just a bitch, I do love you.” The driver doesn't speak English, and he wouldn't care, anyway.

Klaus leans back from passing directions to the driver, and he looks at her, and he smiles, like he’s won, and Caroline regrets everything — she hates that look.

“I don’t think so,” he says, and leans back against the cracking leather seat. “And I love you,” he adds, quietly, and no, it’s Caroline that's really won.

She just turns her head and looks out the window, to the snowy streets and bright storefronts and laughing people, but Klaus is still looking at her like _she's_ the beautiful sight.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> hi! leave a comment/kudos if u enjoyed :)


End file.
